Well, here is my experience with Toshiba Portege 3480 and PCMCIA CDROM - it failed,
but when I connected an USB CDROM with a second copy of Knopix it booted first of the PCMCIA drive and moved to the USB drive looking for file system. So I think that PCMCIA driver is not started but usb is at boot time.
For some one without USB CDRM a USB memory stick can be used until, I hope developers can correct the problem with the PCMCIA driver. ( please don't flame me if everyone knows this, but reading the post, I think this is the problem)